Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Mary of Nazareth’s Beauty Secret


Image result for mary of nazareth
 
 
 
“There is only one thing that really does grow old: not age, but sin.
Sin makes (us) old, because it fossilizes the heart. It closes it, makes it inert, it makes it fade. But the (woman) full of grace is empty of sin.”
 
Pope Francis
 
 
 
 
 
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Vatican City, Dec 8, 2017 / 04:37 am ().- On Friday’s Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis offered his own ‘beauty secret’ – with Mary as model – saying beauty does not come from age or appearance, but from living a virtuous life rooted in scripture.
 
The Blessed Virgin Mary, though a simple and humble person, “lived a beautiful life,” the Pope said Dec. 8, asking “what was her secret?”
 
The answer can be found in the story of the Annunciation, he said. “In many paintings, Mary is depicted sitting in front of the angel with a small book. The book is scripture.”
“The Word of God was her secret: close to her heart, it then took flesh within her womb. Remaining with God, dialoguing with Him in every circumstance, Mary made her life beautiful.”
 
In his special Angelus address for the feast day, Pope Francis emphasized that what makes someone’s life beautiful is “not appearance, not what passes, but the heart focused on God.”
 
Francis noted how Mary came from a simple family and lived in a humble fashion in Nazareth, which was an almost unknown village. She was not famous. “Our Lady did not even have a comfortable life,” he said. Yet the angel greets her with the words, “hail, full of grace!”
 
The Church extols the Mother of God as “all beautiful,” or “tota pulchra,” in Latin, the Pope continued. This is because her beauty is not found in her outward appearance, but in her total freedom from sin.
“There is only one thing that really does grow old: not age, but sin,” he emphasized. “Sin makes (us) old, because it fossilizes the heart. It closes it, makes it inert, it makes it fade. But the (woman) full of grace is empty of sin.”
 
Let us ask for her help to remain free of sin, he concluded, so that we too can live a beautiful life, saying “yes,” to God.
 
After reciting the Angelus, Pope Francis noted how later in the afternoon he will visit Rome’s Piazza di Spagna to venerate the statue of the Immaculate Conception overlooking the Spanish Steps.
He asked those gathered to join him spiritually in this act, “which expresses filial devotion to our heavenly Mother.”
The statue of Our Lady, which sits atop a nearly 40-foot-high column, was dedicated Dec. 8, 1857, just a few years after the Catholic Church adopted the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Since the 1950s, it has been a custom for popes to venerate the statue for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. ….
 
[End of quote]
 
 
O SANCTISSIMA
 
 
O Sanctissima O Piissima (1)
Dulcis Virgo Maria
Mater amta intemerata
Ora ora pro nobis
 
Tota pulchra es O Maria
Et macula non est in te
Mater anmata intemerata
Ora ora pro nobis
 
Sicut lilium inter spinas(2)
Sic Maria inter filias
Mater amata intemerata
Ora ora pro nobis
 
In miseria in angustia
Ora Virgo pro nobis
Pro nobis ora in mortis hora
Ora ora pro nobis
 
Tu solatium et refugium
Virgo Mater Maria
Quidquid optamus
per te speramus (3)
Ora, ora pro nobis
 
 
Translation of the Latin 
 
O most holy
O most devoted
Sweet Virgin Mary
Mother with love unswerving
Pray, o pray for us.
 
You are true beauty,
O Mary
And there is no stain of sin in you
Mother with love unswerving
Pray, o pray for us
 
Like the lily among the thorns
So are you O Mary among women(4)
Mother with love unswerving
Pray, o pray for us
 
In our misery and anguish
Pray for us, O Virgin
Pray for us in the hour of our death
Pray, o pray for us 
 
O comfort and refuge
Virgin Mother Mary
Whatever we seek, we aspire to through you
Pray, o pray for us

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Saint Augustine and Luther



Martin Luther and Augustine of Hippo

Nehemiah and Martin Luther
 


Part Two:
Saint Augustine and Luther
 

 
 
“Actually, Augustine and Luther were similar in many ways.
Both achieved fame and influence from the geographical and political edge of the known civilized world …. Both were self confident and self reflective at the same time.
Both were well educated and exceptional in the use of language.
Both enjoyed and even reveled in controversy, and a good bit of what each wrote was against something or someone.
Both were troubled and sought a sense of self that would bring a measure of peace”.
 
Farley Snell
 
 
 
Farley Snell thus introduces his paper, “Augustine and Luther: A Tale of Two Worlds” (2014): https://olliasheville.com/sites/default/files/Instructor_Handouts/SnellFarley/AUGUSTINE%20AND%20LUTHER--A%20TALE%20OF%20TWO%20WORLDS.pdf
 
Introduction
Augustine and Luther Compared and Contrasted
 
Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) and Martin Luther (1484-1546 CE) are not only two of Western Christianity’s most influential thinkers. Their lives and views provide a window into the times in which they lived, and an opportunity for us to embrace, alter or reject what they thought.
 
Augustine was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in North Africa from 395 until his death in 430. He is most widely remembered for his autobiographical meditation Confessions in which he tells of his various personal struggles culminating in his conversion in 386, while in Italy for the only time in his life. What has attracted the most attention is his sexual struggle (people often quote his prayer, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet”), and what has drawn the most blame is his consequent view on sex and human nature. His ideas on sexuality and marriage-- understood by few, and dismissed by many-- have fomented debate, especially in the modern era.
 
But his significance lies beyond this narrow (and even inaccurate) focus. His ideas have persisted, been debated, altered, rejected by some, affirmed by others. This is especially true of his own version of the idea of original sin (whereby all persons are born with a defective moral nature and with guilt). The same can be said of his ideas on grace and free will, accompanied by his teaching on predestination, which were reworked over the centuries, and which played a major role in Reformation thought. When Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic thirteenth century theologian, stated that “grace does not destroy nature, but completes it,” he drew on the newly rediscovered works of Aristotle to discuss “nature,” and on Augustine to discuss “grace.” 2
 
Augustine’s understanding of God influenced most subsequent forms of western mysticism, as well as Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God in the eleventh century.
His treatment of the two “cities” in City of God formed a basis for western monasticism. It played out in the medieval struggles between emperor and pope, and to some extent in discussions of church and state. His discussion of time (Confessions, XI) and his effort at a Christian philosophy of history in City of God have had continued influence. His version of the just war theory has been appealed to in many instances, but considered an oxymoron by many critics.
 
Luther was an Augustinian monk who taught at a newly formed university in Wittenberg in what was then Electoral Saxony (part of present day Germany). In 1517 his criticism of papal indulgences eventually led to the breakup of western Christianity (eastern and western Christianity parted ways in 1054), a breakup that had dramatic and continuing political and social impact on Europe and subsequently the New World.
 
In popular imagery he is remembered for being the champion of individual conscience (as a result largely of his “Here I stand” speech before the imperial Diet at Worms in 1520). He is credited with wresting authority from the papacy by appealing to Scripture alone (sola scriptura). In like manner, he is appreciated for having made the Bible available to common folk (he translated both Testaments into German). His idea of the “priesthood of all believers” is seen as freeing the individual from the domination of the clergy. His views of the “two realms” (the distinction between the political and religious realms) and his words on the peasants’ revolt have been seen as supporting the totalitarianism of the Third Reich. The holocaust in like manner has been traced to his anti-Semitism. His central teaching—justification apart from works of the law—has been embraced by many, but attacked by others.
 
Actually, Augustine and Luther were similar in many ways. Both achieved fame and influence from the geographical and political edge of the known civilized world (Augustine in Hippo in North Africa and Luther in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony). Both were self confident and self reflective at the same time. Both were well educated and exceptional in the use of language.
 
Both enjoyed and even reveled in controversy, and a good bit of what each wrote was against something or someone. Both were troubled and sought a sense of self that would bring a measure of peace. Consequently, both—though in distinctive ways—had a negative appraisal of human effort and championed divine initiative or grace.
One could say that both ended their lives embittered. All of this within an understanding of scripture and Christian teaching.
 
But they lived in different worlds. For one thing, Augustine lived in a time when the Roman Empire sought with some success unity and stability, and a coherent and unified Christian doctrine and church to be the foundation of the Empire’s goals. By Luther’s time, what was left of the old imperial aspiration—in the form of the Holy Roman Empire—was weakened by external threats from the Ottoman Empire and by disintegration from within. And the Roman Church was itself beset by forces such as the conciliar movement.
 
More to the point, however, was that each struggled to give definition to the self in radically different intellectual settings. Augustine records his long search (ending in his conversion) in his historic autobiographical meditation, the Confessions. His experience of being driven by external satisfactions (what has traditionally been called “lusts the flesh”) left him unsatisfied, as did his preoccupation with what is partial, epitomized by the individual. Augustine felt the need, within himself and within the reality of which he was a part, to discover what is lasting rather than passing, and what is whole rather than what was partial—and to find his place within it. (This is one of the meanings of “mysticism.”) This was his “world.” 3 ….
 
[End of quote]
 
 
Likewise, we read at:
http://evangelicalcatholicmissionalfaithful.blogspot.com.au/2007/02/was-luther-augustinian.html
 
Luther and Augustine
 
 
That Augustine was an influence on Martin Luther is undeniable; different historians and theologians, however, vary in opinion as how great this influence actually was. Luther joined the Order of Saint Augustine at Erfurt in July 1505, and received a spiritual formation that focused on “Great Father Augustine” (which also was the title of a hymn then in Augustinian use).
 
The Order used Augustine’s thought in the theological preparation given to its candidates. One of Augustine’s superiors, Johann von Stauptiz O.S.A. (1468-1524), gave Augustine especial emphasis. It is certain, therefore, that Luther had read and studied many of Augustine’s writings, that he memorised passages from Augustine, and that he cited Augustine more than any other non-Scriptural source.
 
It is known, for example, that Luther used a copy of the printed collection of some works by Augustine that had been published in Strassburg by Martinus Flach in 1489 under the title of Opuscula plurima, for Luther with his own hand wrote annotations on its margins in 1509. And in 1516 Luther was known to have been studying the eighth volume of the Opera Omnia (the world's first complete printed collection of Augustine's works) edited by Johannes Amerbach in eleven volumes in Basel in 1506
 
Specialist studies of Luther’s writings have determined the wide range of Augustine’s works that Luther cited. Luther was one of the first major figures to have readily available to him the ‘entire Augustine’ in the Johann Amerbach printed edition of Augustine’s Opera omnia ("Complete Works") mentioned above. Luther was not only trained in a theology that was heavily Augustinian, but also found resonance in Augustine’s thought for some of the theological issues with which he himself struggled, e.g., sin, grace, predestination, the interpretation of Scripture, and faith.
 
He initially made his own the basic tenets of Augustine’s theology. This is most evident in his work as a professor at the University of Wittenberg before the time he posted his now-famous ninety-five theses on the castle church there on 31st October 1517. Luther encouraged his fellow professors to read Augustine’s works. Augustine was the patron saint of the university. With the public eruption of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, Luther did not abandon Augustine, but used him selectively and sometimes out of context in an effort to support the changed direction of his own line of thought.
 
There became large areas of thought where Luther diverged from Augustine, e.g., in matters regarding the authority and magisterium of the Church. Even so, Augustine’s thought was still frequently used as the base from which Luther’s theology proceeded. As Luther matured, his theology became increasingly independent of Augustine, but he continued to praise Augustine. Further historical and theological research remains to be done on Augustine’s influence on Luther at various stages of the latter’s life.
 
In the development of his theology, Martin Luther turned to the writings and thought of Augustine more than to any other individual source except the Bible. In Augustine of Hippo (354-430) there was a firm position on many of the issues that were to become the focus of controversy during the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, for this reason Augustine has been regarded as a determinative church source for the theology that constituted the Protestant Reformation.
….
It has been demonstrated that Luther began studying Augustine as early as 1509, when he was twenty-six years of age and in his third year as a member of the Order of Saint Augustine. He quickly became enthralled by the writings of Augustine. Luther became thoroughly acquainted with them. This was not merely because he was a member of the Order of Saint Augustine, but rather because of the intrinsic value and truth he found in them. Later he wrote, "I do not defend Augustine because I am an Augustinian. Before I began reading his works he meant nothing to me." The theology of Augustine was held in great esteem by Luther, and promoted widely while he was at Wittenberg. Luther even described Augustine as a leading advocate for reform in the church.

Even so, further specialist study needs to be done on the thought of Luther at various periods of his life, for there were times when he used Augustine's writings possibly only because they were a convenient resource. There are also instances wherein Luther quoted Augustine quite selectively to suit his own purpose, and suggested that Augustine resonated with Lutheran reasoning when the fuller context of Augustine's writing in fact would demonstrate that this was untrue.
 
As Luther grew older and more independent in his thought, Luther turned less to Augustine. Even in his early writings at the time when the Reformation erupted, Luther did not merely reproduce Augustine's thought. It is true to say that sometimes the germ of Luther's ideas were already present in Augustine's writings, but it is not correct to attribute to Augustine more credit for Luther's own thinking than that. Even in the writing of the most mature Luther, Augustine was often the starting point, but only that.

 
….
 
Link
 
Was Luther Augustinian? This blog says that this question is difficult to answer from a historical perspective because more concrete evidence must be documented to show that Luther was influenced by Augustine. ….

 
 
For Part One of this series see:
 
Nehemiah and Martin Luther
 
https://www.academia.edu/37073905/Nehemiah_and_Martin_Luther

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Pope Francis calls for better protection of women, children during Thai visit



The Pope at St. Louis Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand as part of an apostolic visit on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Mission de Siam. 


Pope Francis has pleaded for action to protect women and children from exploitation, abuse and enslavement at the start of his weeklong visit to Asia.

Pope Francis has called for women and children to be protected from exploitation, abuse and enslavement as he began a busy two days of meetings in Thailand, where human trafficking and forced prostitution help fuel the sexual tourism industry.
Francis on Thursday pleaded for action against one of the reg
ion's greatest scourges at the start of his weeklong visit to Asia.


He praised the Thai government's efforts to fight human trafficking in a speech delivered at host Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha's Government House offices.


The Pope at St. Louis Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand as part of an apostolic visit on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Mission de Siam.

But he appealed for greater international commitment to protect women and children "who are violated and exposed to every form of exploitation, enslavement, violence and abuse".
He called for ways to "uproot this evil and to provide ways to restore their dignity".
"The future of our peoples is linked in large measure to the way we will ensure a dignified future to our children," he said.


The United Nations considers Thailand a key trafficking destination as well as a source of forced labour and sex slaves, who are trafficked at home or abroad.


Thai Buddhist Supreme Patriarch Somdej Phra Maha Muneewong greeting Pope Francis during a meeting at Wat Ratchabophit in Bangkok.


The UN drug and crime agency said in a report this summer that trafficking for sexual exploitation accounted for 79 per cent of all trafficking cases in Thailand from 2014-2017.
Of the 1248 victims detected, 70 per cent were underage girls, a 2019 report said, citing data from Thai authorities.


The UN cited sex tourism as a factor in fuelling the trafficking of more victims, who were forced, coerced or deceived into sexual exploitation.


The US State Department has faulted Thailand for failing to fully crackdown on traffickers who induce young Thai girls into pornography, as well as the exploitation, including via debt bondage, of migrant workers in commercial fishing enterprises.


The Thai government has insisted it has made significant progress in cracking down on human trafficking and has vowed continued cooperation with international bodies to improve.
Prime Minister Chan-ocha didn't make any reference to the problem in his remarks to Francis, though he stressed that Thailand had made great strides in promoting human rights.


"We have sought to strengthen the family institution and ensure equal opportunities for all groups in society, especially women and children," he told Francis after a brief private meeting.


Francis has made the fight against human trafficking one of the cornerstones of his papacy, calling it a crime against humanity.




https://www.sbs.com.au/news/pope-francis-calls-for-better-protection-of-women-children-during-thai-visit

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Carsten Peter Thiede’s early dating of Matthew’s Gospel


Thiede Carsten Peter
 
 


“The neomodernist stranglehold is exemplified by the treatment accorded Fr. Jean Carmignac, who died in 1986. Perhaps the greatest French Bible scholar of the century, who dated the writing of each of the four Gospels between A.D. 40 and 50, he was never allowed to publish
his research, on orders of the French bishops. They accused Carmignac of "an obsession of struggling against the majority of exegetes".”
 
Paul Likoudis
 
 
 
Then came Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede with his dramatic evidence for a radical early dating of the Gospel of Matthew. We read a little of it in the following account:
 
 


 
Christmas Eve 1994 would have come and gone like any other, had it not been for three tiny papyrus fragments discussed in The Times of London’s sensational front-page story. The avalanche of letters to the editor jarred the world into realizing that Matthew d’Ancona’s story was as big as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The flood of calls received by Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, the scholar behind the story, and the international controversy that spread like wildfire, give us an inkling as to why the Magdalen Papyrus has embroiled Christianity in a high-stakes tug-of-war over the Bible.
 
Thiede and d’Ancona boldly tell the story of two scholars a century apart who stumbled on the oldest known remains of the New Testament–hard evidence confirming that St. Matthew’s Gospel is the account of an eyewitness to Jesus. It starts in 1901 when the Reverend Charles B. Huleatt acquires three pieces of a manuscript on the murky antiquities market of Luxor, Egypt. He donates the papyrus fragments to his alma mater, Magdalen College in Oxford, England, where they are kept in a butterfly display case, along with Oscar Wilde’s ring. For nearly a century, visitors hardly notice the Matthew fragments, initially dated to a.d.180-200; but after Dr. Thiede redates them to roughly a.d. 60, people flock to the library wanting to behold a first-century copy of the Gospel.
 
But what is all the fuss about? How can three ancient papyrus fragments be so significant? How did Thiede arrive at this radical early dating? And what does it mean to the average Christian? Now we have authoritative answers to these pivotal questions. Indeed, the Magdalen Papyrus corroborates the tradition that St. Matthew actually wrote the Gospel bearing his name, that he wrote it within a generation of Jesus’ death, and that the Gospel stories about Jesus are true. Some will vehemently deny Thiede’s claims, others will embrace them, but nobody can ignore Eyewitness to Jesus.
[End of quote]
 
Paul Likoudis, writing for EWTN in 1997, has more to say on the matter.
I (Damien Mackey) would not necessarily agree with him, though, that “Matthew's is the first Gospel”. Fr. Jean Carmignac (mentioned in this article) made an excellent case for (if I recall correctly) Mark’s being basically the Gospel of St. Peter – and therefore the first gospel - translated by Mark into Greek.
 
New Book Claims Four Gospels Written Before Fall Of Jerusalem
 
….
 
The hundred years' war on the Gospels-led by Rudolf Bultmann, who charged that "we can know practically nothing about Jesus' life and personality," and escalated by some of the most prominent Catholic Bible scholars working today-has produced the intended results of religious indifference, agnosticism, and atheism.
 
Typical of the Bultmann-inspired Catholic exegetes is Fr. Jerome. Murphy O'Connor, O.P., who, writing in the December, 1996 issue of the Claretians', pontificates that the Gospels are "mythical embellishments," that Jesus didn't know He was God and didn't know where His power came from, that Mary considered Him an embarrassment to the family, that she was not at the foot of the cross as the evangelists relate, and more.
 
"Do the Gospels Paint a Clear Picture of Jesus?," he asked. Definitely not, he tells his students and readers.
 
At the core of the dissident biblical exegesis which has produced such disastrous consequences for Catholic life, liturgy, catechetics, and scholarship is a refusal to believe that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses of the events described.
 
Though there has been no shortage of genuine Catholic exegetes, archaeologists, and historians who have insisted on an early dating of the Gospels to within a decade or two of Jesus' life, these scholars have often found it difficult to break through the controls put in place by an oppressive neomodernist establishment in both Catholic and Protestant institutions.
 
(The neomodernist stranglehold is exemplified by the treatment accorded Fr. Jean Carmignac, who died in 1986. Perhaps the greatest French Bible scholar of the century, who dated the writing of each of the four Gospels between A.D. 40 and 50, he was never allowed to publish his research, on orders of the French bishops. They accused Carmignac of "an obsession of struggling against the majority of exegetes.")
 
Now comes a German scientist, Carsten Peter Thiede, director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, who, with Matthew D'Ancona, is about to dash to pieces the Bultmann-built edifice of modernist exegesis.
 
Their recently published book, (Doubleday, 1996), is about a small piece of papyrus held at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is the oldest fragment of in existence today.
 
The fragment contains disjointed segments of 26, but even more important than the writing style, which Thiede pinpointed to the time of Jesus' life, is the use of KS, an abbreviated form of [missing], to refer to Jesus as Lord God- meaning that the ancient author believed that Jesus is divine.
 
Thiede, a papyrologist, furthermore concludes that must have been the first Gospel written.
The implications of this are enormous. As Thiede and D'Ancona write in their book:
 
"Bultmann was wrong: The authors of the Gospel could hear far more than the faintest whisper of Jesus' voice.
Indeed, the first readers of may have heard the very words which the Nazarene preacher spoke during his ministry, may have listened to the parables when they were first delivered to the peasant crowd; may even have asked the wise man questions and waited respectfully for answers. The voice they heard was not a whisper but the passionate oratory of a real man of humble origins whose teaching would change the world."
 
The issue of the dating of the Gospels has implications, furthermore, for believers and nonbelievers alike. "... We have come to realize the extent to which this new claim is directly relevant to the fundamental faith questions which all people, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and agnostic must ask themselves. The redating of the fragments, in other words, has a life beyond the confines of the academy. . .
"The redating of the Gospels- a process which is only now beginning in earnest-may seem an enterprise appropriate to its times, to the mood of the millennium's end. There is now good reason to suppose that the [missing], with its detailed accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and the Great Commission, was written not long after the crucifixion and certainly before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70; that the was distributed early enough to reach Qumran; that the belonged to the first generation of Christian codices; and that internal evidence suggests a date before A.D. 70 even for the nonsynoptic .... These are the first stirrings of a major process of scholarly reappraisal."
 
International Upheaval
 
Thiede's findings are causing an international upheaval among Bible scholars, particularly Catholic exegetes who have bought the Bultmann line that separates the Gospels to a generation or more from Jesus' contemporaries (making them the unreliable voice of an uncertain community) ….
 
Two hundred years ago, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment, Reimarus, described the task of Church-haters to be to "completely separate what the Apostles presented in their writings (i.e., the Gospels) from what Jesus himself actually said and taught during his lifetime."
….
 
Footnote
 
Among the brief sections of the Gospel on the Magdalen fragment is: "Then one of the XII, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priest and said, 'What will you give me for my work?'"
….

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Institut Catholique de Paris ignores Carmignac



Image result for institut catholique de paris
Fr Jean Carmignac

dates Gospels early

 


Part Two:

Institut Catholique de Paris ignores Carmignac

 

 

“The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts. It discovered that

Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique in Paris where he

had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all, it has prohibited people

from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...”.

The Wanderer

 


 

In the 1990’s, colleague Frits Albers (RIP), PH.B, wrote about what he considered to be the “betrayals” perpetrated by Paul Cardinal Poupard, the Archbishop of Paris, including his complete snub of the research of Fr. Jean Carmignac.

 

 

...

History has recorded several major betrayals by Cardinal Paul Poupard, Archbishop of Paris and president of its Institut Catholique. I will briefly describe two of them here as an introduction to his major one, his ‘resolution’ of the Galileo Case.

 

PART ONE:   WHY I MISTRUST CARD. PAUL POUPARD

 

Here follows the official text of this “public put-down”, issued by the Holy See press office on July 11, 1981, as it appeared in the Osservatore Romano of July 20 1981, mentioning Archbishop [by then not yet Cardinal] Paul Poupard by name.

 

The letter sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to His Excellency Mons. Poupard on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin has been interpreted in a certain section of the press as a revision of previous stands taken by the Holy See in regard to this author, and in particular of the Monitum of the Holy Office of 30 June 1962, which pointed out that the work of the author contained ‘ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors’.

 

The question has been asked whether such an interpretation is well founded. After having consulted the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith, which, by order of the Holy Father, had been duly consulted beforehand about the letter in question, we are in a position to reply in the negative. Far from being a revision of the previous stands of the Holy See, Cardinal Casaroli’s letter expresses reservations in various passages - and these reservations have been passed over in silence by certain newspapers - reservations which refer precisely to the judgment given in the Monitum of June 1962, even though this document is not explicitly mentioned.

 

The second example of betrayal involving the Institut Catholique of Paris and its president, Archbishop Paul Poupard, centres on interference with the dissemination of truth by means of the direct and wilful suppression of Catholic scholarship in favour of a free and unencumbered promotion of doctrinal errors. The scandal appeared in the March 19, 1992 edition of the American Catholic paper The Wanderer, quoting two other major European Catholic periodicals, 30 Days and Il Sabato.

 

Reporting a scandal: An editorial in the current issue of 30 Days magazine (issue no. 2), titled “Scandal at the Institut Catholique” raises some tough questions about the openness of modern biblical scholars to research which offers evidence that the Gospels were written by A.D. 50.

 

Reporting on investigative work conducted by the Italian Catholic weekly Il Sabato the editorial asks why the Institut Catholique in Paris will not allow to be printed, or even acknowledge the existence of, the biblical scholarship of Fr. Jean Carmignac.

Fr. Carmignac, until his death in 1986, was one of the world’s leading experts in Hebrew and Aramaic, and his extensive research in language and the Fathers of the Church led him to believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written their Gospels by A.D. 50.

 

In addition, Carmignac noted the scholarship of 49 other recognised experts who agreed with him, but whose works also had either been ignored or censored or else they did not dare wage a battle in the name of their scientific conviction.

 

“For the consequences”, stated the 30 Days editorial, “would have revolutionised the dominant exegetical trends today. Many ideas, whose certainty is taken for granted today, would have crumbled ... If the Synoptic Gospels were written in a Semitic language it means they were written soon after Jesus’ years on earth, when the protagonists were still alive. It means that the Synoptic Gospels are the testimonies of people who saw and heard, of witnesses to the facts. It means they are not late elaborations by anonymous transcribers of popular traditions”.

 

In 1983. Fr. Carmignac published a small book containing his findings and conclusions, and promised a later book which he described as “more convincing than ever and, I hope, irrefutable”.

 

But at that time an effort began to bury his work, the editorial said, under hefty shovelfuls of earth ... Six years after his death, none of these texts has ever been published. An impenetrable curtain of silence has fallen on Fr. Carmignac and his work. The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts. It discovered that Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique in Paris where he had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all, it has prohibited people from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...

 

One of the 49 scholars mentioned here by the late Fr. Jean Carmignac is, no doubt, Claude Tresmontant whose magnificent book on that very same topic, The Hebrew Christ, carries a lengthy foreword by the Most Reverend Jean Charles Thomas, Bishop of Ajaccio, dated May 1, 1983: three years before the death of Fr. Jean Camignac. In his Foreword Bishop Thomas refers specifically to the same general state of affairs as was reported by the three Catholic papers mentioned above. There is no change of heart in either the ‘Institut Catholique’ or its president, Paul Poupard ...